


Shut Up, Six, A Ten Is Speaking

by TagTheScullion



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Gen, being a young adult is all about reinventing your teenage self isn’t it?, cw: swearing, drew and piper talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 08:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30086409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TagTheScullion/pseuds/TagTheScullion
Summary: On the 10 year celebration of the battle against Gaea, Drew has an apology to make and Piper has a story to hear.
Relationships: Piper McLean & Drew Tanaka
Comments: 12
Kudos: 13





	Shut Up, Six, A Ten Is Speaking

**Author's Note:**

> I love Drew, I’m not even going to defend her behaviour, but I’m all for characters growing. Her relationship with Piper is never explored, and he previous relationship with Silena is barely mentioned... so here I tried to fix it!
> 
> Disclaimer: all characters belong to Rick Riordan

Piper scanned her marquee for people she wanted to talk to. She didn’t mean to be picky but her hormones had her in a really bad mood, and she didn’t want to make anyone cry today.

Today was a happy day. Full of celebration, fun, and old friends.

Let’s rewind for a moment. For the past decade, ever since Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter had joined forces to defeat Mother Earth —no, Leo, not Snow White— they would throw a big party on Victory Day. 

For five long years the party went wild: helium balloons, fireworks, alcohol, inappropriate behaviour behind poorly closed doors, people laughing, people yelling, loud music, and lots of dancing.

They would alternate camps, one year each, until they came to the conclusion that most campers who had fought the battle against Gaea were no longer attending camp. They were off to university, or living their adult lives… or dead. 

So instead of a party for newcomers to celebrate an event they didn’t care much about and commemorate heroes they hadn’t even met, the older demigods had come to an agreement.

Each 1st of August, Camp Jupiter would open its gates for old comrades —Roman or Greek— to gather for a whole day of games. And of course the subsequent small party that wasn’t all that wild because most of them started falling asleep not after 2 am —20s hit like that, what are you gonna do?—.

They would rise huge tents in the Fields of Mars —sorry, kiddos, no War Games on August 1st—, one for each Roman Cohort, and one for each Greek Cabin. 

It wasn’t mandatory to stay in your designated tent, most of them mingled around all day, meeting old acquaintances, exchanging anecdotes, spreading gossip, and tagging each other in cute Instagram stories.

Piper had spent the better part of her morning catching up with demigods who didn’t belong to her cabin. She’s seen Clarisse sacrifice herself for her preschool daughter in a fierce dodgeball match; she’d witnessed Nico di Angelo’s fantastic penalty against Frank Zhang’s team; she’d spoken with Katie and Pollux who were debating whether Merlot or Malbec was better.

Reyna had dropped by midmorning, she and Piper had spent a while talking about Percy and Annabeth’s newborn twins —and judging the atrocious names they had been given—.

Piper had avoided some cliques here and there who she knew would’ve irritated her. Eventually, her feet —which had lately decided to swell to the size of Jumbo Jets randomly— had hurt enough for her to decide to sit down for a while.

She played with her wedding ring, her feet up on the picnic table in front of her, wondering when her darling husband would return with her veggie tacos and Diet Coke. 

The answer was ‘not soon enough’.

“Hello,” she was startled by the one voice she hadn’t expected to hear. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Drew Tanaka sat down next to her in all of her supermodel glory.

Piper took a moment to study her half-sister. She had always felt insecure comparing herself to Drew, but the difference felt particularly obvious with her twelve weeks of pregnancy.

Whereas Piper felt bloated and sweaty, Drew looked fantastic. Her hair was up in a ponytail —a hairdo Piper knew the older girl would’ve repudiated in her teenage years—. Her eyeliner was spot on, as it had always been, and while her lipstick wasn’t the strong pink Drew had favoured all those years ago, the new softer shade flattered her much better.

Piper recalled Drew had her own make-up line nowadays. She had been told her older sister employed demigods who left camp and had trouble adapting to the mortal world. 

She wasn’t annoyed by Drew as she had been when she was 16, and in turn, she doubted Drew was jealous of her in any way. And yet despite both growing up, Piper had certainly lost touch with her through the years, the last time they’d seen each other had been Lacy’s high school graduation, four years ago.

Drew cleared her throat, reminding Piper that she’d been staring for too long.

“Sorry,” she said automatically. “I was thinking.”

Drew hummed. “What about?”

“Family.”

“Oh,” Drew seemed to be weighing whether to say something else. “I’ve been thinking about family lately, too.”

Piper raised an eyebrow. She didn’t mean to look skeptical, but Drew had never seemed too family-inclined. 

Her disbelief must’ve shown, for Drew explained: “My uncle passed away, the one that brought me up.”

“I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay,” Drew shrugged. “He wasn’t always nice. But when I found out I thought… for a second I thought I was alone. I have no mortal siblings, I’m not married nor do I have plans to start a family any time soon. And, well, I never made an effort with any of you.”

Piper had an inkling as to where this was going, but she didn’t want to interrupt. Talking about feelings could be difficult, once you got the ball running, better keep it going.

“You and I never got along,” Drew stated. “Sometimes people aren’t compatible but I’m afraid we never knew if that was our case. And it’s my fault.” As a second thought she added: “Mostly.”

“I wasn’t nice to you either,” Piper said. “We can share the blame, 50/50.”

Drew gave her a reluctant smile. “I was bitchy first, I get to apologise first.”

Piper wasn’t sure what to say. She appreciated the sentiment, but she feared she’d cry if Drew talked too much. Goddamned hormones. 

“I’m sorry, too,” she managed. “I should’ve tried to get to know you before I judged you.”

“Perhaps,” Drew shrugged. “Perhaps we were both quick to judge and slow to reach out.”

Piper felt the irrational need to hug her sister. Instead she said, “You came all the way to San Francisco to talk to us one by one?”

“I’m here to speak to all of you, yes,” Drew admitted. “But I saw Clarisse’s kid, you know her? Big girl, unplucked eyebrows—.”

“She’s _four_!”

“Her name’s Silena,” Drew explained. “I didn’t know that until today. Hearing that name being called around… it brought back memories.”

“I imagine.”

“When I first met you,” Drew said. “I told you Silena was no hero because she didn’t stick to the rite of passage. That’s bullshit.”

“Believe it or not,” Piper commented. “I could guess that myself.”

“Shut it, six, a ten is speaking,” Drew’s voice held no malice, if anything, she sounded like she was grateful Piper was trying to keep the mood light. “I’m trying to explain.”

“Aw,” Piper put a hand on her heart. “You’d say I’m more than a four?”

“Do you want to hear the story or not?” Drew got up and brought back a couple of 7UPs for her and Piper.

“I’d like to hear what you have to say,” Piper accepted the soft drink and the straw she was offered. The heat was making her miserable.

“You were always told the version of Silena’s sacrifice that Clarisse and Percy told,” Drew began. “It’s a cute fairytale, but reality is always harsher.”

Piper thought Drew had a knack for dramatics, but she wanted to hear her version. She was right after all: Piper only knew the story Annabeth —and some of her other siblings— had told her. Silena was misled to the Dark Side and then sacrificed herself to bring Clarisse and her siblings into the battle.

“I always looked up to Silena,” Drew confessed. “She was everything a daughter of Aphrodite was supposed to be: beautiful, caring, affectionate. She even knew how to create wonderful outfits with the horrible orange camp shirts! When she and that Hephaestus guy started dating we all thought she was so brave. Back then we weren’t quite sure if the rite of passage was a curse or just a tradition.”

Piper was about to say she didn’t expect their mother to be such a tosser as to actually curse her own children because they chose not to break hearts, but Drew held up a hand to silence her. Some things never changed.

“At any rate, Silena had managed to put us in a different light in the eyes of the rest of camp,” Drew explained. “She started participating in Capture-The-Flag, and even got involved in the war effort. Suddenly, we weren’t the dumb, pretty kids of Cabin 10. We were fighters, we were _useful_!”

Piper saw cracks on Drew’s façade of careless indifference; she kept fidgeting with her straw, and she wouldn’t face Piper as she spoke. 

“Do you know how it felt to find out she had been passing information to the enemy for _years_?” Heartbreaking, if Drew’s tone was anything to go by. “I couldn’t accept it. I denied it for weeks. I didn’t want to believe every time Silena had listened to us, helped us, been a friend and a big sister to us… she had only been collecting ammo to be used against us.”

“She did love you,” Piper argued. “For all we know she only spied for Kronos in the end.”

“She didn’t,” Drew snorted. “She’d had that fling with Luke before he went rogue, and Kronos would’ve wanted her from the beginning. We all trusted her, she knew everything about everyone.”

“Her hair was so big because it was full of secrets?” Piper couldn’t stop the words out of her mouth. Here her sister was opening her heart to her, and this is what she came up with.

Luckily Drew gave her a small smile. “And because fashion was shit back then.” Her face turned sad again, and Piper saw her eyes were gleaming with unshed tears. “It was embarrassing.”

“The… fashion?”

“No! Yes,” Drew shook her head impatiently. “The fashion was bad, but what embarrassed us was that she knew all of our secrets. The things you only tell the people closest to you. The people you’d trust with your life. And all of a sudden that person who knows all of your weaknesses, who’s seen you at your worst, who knows where to press to hurt you… she’s sharing it all with the enemy!”

“You felt vulnerable,” Piper concluded. “Because you thought she had told them personal stuff, not just war-related information.”

Drew shrugged. “Who knows what she told them? The rest of camp, they can make a martyr out of her for all I care. But she was no hero to me, she never will be.”

Piper wanted to argue, to insist that Drew didn’t taint the memories of their sister completely, that Silena had been confused but she had likely never shared whatever big secrets she knew of individual people. That Silena had loved them for real, and had wanted what was best for them. But sometimes people didn’t want logic, sometimes it was okay to talk and be heard. 

“I was a bitch because I didn’t want to trust anyone anymore,” Drew said after a pause. “I saw you walk into camp, brave even when you didn’t know what the hell was going on, fighting for a relationship you didn’t want to break. And I saw _her_ in you. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

Drew stood up to leave, but Piper grabbed her hand to stop her. She could see her husband, a hundred yards away, bringing her lunch.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said sincerely. “I know it’s a bit late to play happy family, but if you want, I’d love to get together someday. Talk about then… and about now. You _do_ have family, Drew. There’s still time to make an effort with us, and us with you.”

Drew squeezed her hand. Her expression was back under control, but her eyes betrayed gratefulness. 

“I’ll see you around, McLean,” she said.

Piper smiled, “I look forward to it, Tanaka. Besides, I owe you the story of why _I_ was a bitch to _you_.”


End file.
